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Tim Sweeney

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My Top 3 Priorities

Reduce and Eliminate Federal Budget Deficit

Reduce the cost of healthcare including health insurance and medical costs and require drug companies to stop overcharging Americans for needed drugs

Campaign Finance Reform

Experience

Education

University of Michigan Law School — Juris Doctor (J.D.), Law (1983)

University of Illinois — BS Accounting, Accounting and Finance (1980)

Biography

Tim Sweeney graduated from an inner city high school on the school lunch program, then attended University of Illinois through scholarships, loans and working two jobs every summer. He graduated as one of the top accounting students from Univeristy of Illinois, the top accounting program in the country, and won a National Award on the CPA exam. While attending University of Michigan Law School, Tim taught various accounting classes at University of Michigan Undergraduate Business School and was rated as one of the best teachers at the University by his students.

After Tim graduated with honors from University of Michigan Law School, he paid off all his student loans and started working for a major law firm in Los Angeles. Within 7 years, Tim became one of the youngest partners at the firm and represented many national and international clients, including corporations and individuals. After 14 years wtih the firm, one of Tim's clients, a national accounting firm, hired Tim as a senior partner, where Tim represented the firm's largest clients throughout the United States and was a national leader in providing analytic and forensic accounting services and also participated in numerous business restructurings.

Because of Tim's experience and consulting expertise, Tim then worked for an investment management firm and also successfully reorganized and restructured a large multinational corporation. Because of his success, Tim received numerous additional offers and opportunities.

At that time, at the height of his career, Tim faced a more pressing need; his disabled son was not thriving in the school system and had not learned basic living skills, despite Tim funding some of the best private doctors and therapists. Tim determined that the only way his son could learn the skills he needed was to provide him an indepth one-on-one continuous training regimen unavailable through the school district. Tim therefore quit his lucrative job, and he and his wife spent the next fifteen years sucessfully developing and providing their son the training he needed to learn living skills, thrive and become more indepenent.

Questions & Answers

Questions from The League of Women Voters of California Education Fund and California Counts, a public media collaboration. (4)

Should immigration laws be changed? What changes would you support? Please explain why.

Answer from Tim Sweeney:

We need to secure our borders, not primarily to stop immigration, but to stop the inflow of drugs, criminal activity and security risks. At one time, our country could accommodate substantial immigration from countries throughout the world. At this point, however, we need to reevaluate how many immigrants we can accomodate into our country. We currenlty have a large legal and illegal immigrant population, and before we encourage further substantial legal immigration, we must make efforts to develop a more robust economy and provide jobs and opportunities for our inner city youth of all races, as well as the exisiting immigrant population.

I support a pathway for our existing population of illegal immigrants to obtain legal residency, but not necessarily citizenship. Historically, a large number of imigrants came to California from Mexico, some legally and many illegally. Many of these people came to work agricultural jobs or other jobs that have supported a growing California economy. The government should provide a guest worker program that allows people to work temporarily in the United States and requires them to pay taxes, but does not provide welfare benefits, voting rights or any guaranteed rights to residency or citizenship.

We would also have a separate path to residency, where one of the factors would be the person's record as a guest worker.

The political climate in Washington, D.C. has been extremely partisan in recent years. In that kind of atmosphere, what would you do to get things done while in office?

Answer from Tim Sweeney:

The problem of Washington's obstructionism relates to the ongoing battle between libertal and conservative philosophies and the failure to understand that our government was formed to seek compromises. Both parties now believe that they need to "win" on every issue and need to control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Presidency. The Constitution established our government as a limited government with controls on each branch of governement becasue our founders realized that the worst thing that can happen would be an out of control majority.

If you combine this all or nothing thinking with the main focus of Congress in being reelected, nothing substantial gets done. With the tremendous advantage of encumbancy, nothing will get done in the future.

To avoid this partisanship, we need to set three or four national legislative priorities and work on them - the deficit, rising healthcare costs, campaign finance reform and immigration. None of these issues are traditional long time liberal or conservative issues, but they are all problems that could result in subtantial economic decline, recession or worse. They all can be fixed with a bit of reasonable compromise.

What, if anything, does the U.S. need to do in order to address national security and terrorism? Please explain your answer in detail.

Answer from Tim Sweeney:

To a large extent, terrorism expands geometrically when the United States interferes in a foreign country in an effort to democratize it, which ultimately leads to a collapse of the government and civil war or anarchy. Our own experience with democracy took over a hundred years and a civil war. Many of these foreign countries, while possibly wanting democracy, may not be ready for it. We should support a country's slow transition to democracy, but the kind of democracy that works in their country. Increased terrorism results from these incursions.

Regarding ongoing terror organizations that target the United States, many times we allow them to grow and expand before we take any action against them. A small terror organization becomes larger, gains more funds and grows even larger and then attacks our homeland or our interests. We need to be more proactive in eliminating these groups before they gain any traction through targeting them and their funding. For ISIS and Al Queda, we need to work with countries in the region and be much more bold in our air targeting and financial targeting. Unfortunately, we have now entered a quagmire where every country has a different agenda and different goals. We are allies with Turkey and the Kurds, but they are at war with each other. We want to get rid of Assad but we have to work with Iraq and Iran in eliminating ISIS, and both of them support Assad. Saudia Arabia is our ally, but they have a contrary agenda in Syria based on a sectarian battle between shites and sunnis.

Any solution to this morass must start with the elimination of ISIS and Al Queda, followed by Syria and Iraq both establishing semi autonomous regions for shia, sunni and kurdish people within a loosely federal framework.

The Federal Government plays a part in California water allocation and use through a variety of laws. What, if any, legislation would you support in an effort to handle water shortages caused by the current and any future drought?

Answer from Tim Sweeney:

California provides a large portion of federal taxes and is a substantial portion of the country's economy. The water allocation and use problems relate to the entire western United States. Federal legislation should be adopted to encourage the development of a substantial number of modern desalination plants (possibly solar powered) along the coast to provide a long term supply of water that would reduce a large portion of the State's reliance on water from Northern California and Lake Mead. The State and Federal governments should also work together to modernize the reservoir and storage systems throughout the State.

The federal government must also develop plans to route water from various water surplus states to the Colorado river valley to replenish Lake Mead and balance the water sourcing for the entire western United States.

Who gave money to this candidate?

Contributions

More information about contributions

Source: MapLight analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission.

Political Beliefs

Political Philosophy

Candidates often describe themselves as liberal, conservative or some variation of these two general philosophies. Neither of these two labels represent Tim's philosophy. Tim believes that decisions (and laws) should not be made based on some general overall philosophy, but should be made based on what is the right decision on that particular issue for his constituents and the country.

For example, sometimes corporations take advantage of employees and their unions resulting in unfair treatment of the employees, and certain legislation may be needed to prevent those actions. Other times, the unions may be taking advantage of the company, resulting in the company not being able to survive, and certain legislation may be needed to help that company survive and retain those jobs. Tim worked for a contractor and personally saw how the company and workers both benefited from strong union representation. On the other hand, Tim also worked for a brewery one summer and saw how increasing union demands drove the company out of the state and caused loss of hundreds of high paying jobs. So if you asked Tim if he was pro or anti union, he would say, it depends.

Tim beleives that people should take personal responsibiity for themselves, yet realizes that people may need support and assistance in meeting their goals in life. Would Tim be in favor of free college? No, Tim believes that students and their parents should be repsonsible for their education. From personal experience, he knows that paying for your own education creates a motivation that encourages success. On the other hand, Tim believes that all sudents should have access to a good education and the government should provide assistance to students who otherwise could not afford an education through grants and loans, however, Tim believes the government should substantially lower the egregious interest rates charged to students and their parents (and defer those loans in certain circumstances) and require colleges to use their endowments to subsidize and reduce college costs.

In general, Tim believes in more limited government and fiscal conservatism, but also feels that the government needs to take a more active role in protecting the interests and providing opportunities for everyone to be able to participate in the American Dream. Does this seem to be a conflict? Yes, if you think in absolute terms of liberal or conservative, but Tim would rather think in terms of right or wrong.